


between the shadow and the soul

by absopositivelutely



Series: the divine order of ideal things [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Historical References, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining, Slow Burn, crowley is the softest boi, episode 3 opening.. but More!, more! pining!, podfic available!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 20:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absopositivelutely/pseuds/absopositivelutely
Summary: He remembers: the warmth of being loved pressing into the edges of your soul, and then, later, all of that being torn away, like burning up from the inside. And it is the work of fire, he thinks; souls exist just on the edge of tangible, and if he were to manifest his soul, it would be dark and ashen.Later, he wonders how demons can find it so difficult to sense love; he feels it rolling off of Aziraphale, unmistakably. He has always felt it, he realizes.(alternatively: it takes 6000 years for crowley to realize that aziraphale could love him too.)





	between the shadow and the soul

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome! this took surprisingly long to write, but here have some questionably interpreted historical events! spent way too long on the wikipedia pages for each time period.. anyway, as with aziraphale's part (which if you have not read, you should! it isn't necessary to understand the story but it will make me feel better :D), all subtitles are from [the dictionary of obscure sorrows](https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/) and the title is from pablo neruda's _sonnet xvii_.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

**flashover**

> the moment a conversation becomes real and alive

A little known fact about demons: they invented the dreaded phenomenon of small talk. It is the perfect act of low-grade evil disguised as a pleasantry; it gives people the illusion of doing good when they are instead contributing to a faint haze of discomfort that hovers above themselves, adding to the cloud of overall irritation that then goes on to motivate larger acts of evil.

It is one of the acts that the demon currently known as Crawly will receive a commendation for. In fact, it is almost the only commendation he will receive for something he has actually caused. Most of the others will be of human creation, not that he will tell Beelzebub.

He hadn’t even meant to invent it, really.

The thing is: hell is, when it all comes down to it, an incredibly lonely place. It doesn’t feel lonely. There are demons everywhere, and the offices are so cramped there literally isn’t room to breathe. But no demon wants to talk to you, what with the lack of Love For All Things. So it’s suffocating, and achingly empty, and despite what his official report says, Crawly doesn’t have any evil intentions when he initiates the first instance of small talk.

He knows the damned Ineffable Plan, though it’s a bit less unbearable to hear it from a new voice. Then: “I gave it away!” Aziraphale exclaims, and it is the first breath of fresh air Crawly has taken since he first emerged from Eden’s soil, a wind carrying him upwards. _(he has to wonder: if souls can fall, can they fly?)_

Not many people quite understand the difference between your soul and your life. Angels and demons have mortal souls and immortal lives. Humans have the opposite. Life is physical; it is what the most primitive struggles are for, what Adam and Eve fought for ever since they stepped out of the garden. But your soul is who you are.

He remembers: the warmth of being loved pressing into the edges of your soul, and then, later, all of that being torn away, like burning up from the inside. And it is the work of fire, he thinks; souls exist just on the edge of tangible, and if he were to manifest his soul, it would be dark and ashen.

If he glances out of the corner of his eye, perhaps in a dimension that only celestial beings can comprehend, he can just make it out: Aziraphale’s soul is impossibly bright, but it’s not quite like the other angels that he remembers. Crawly looks back at the two humans, making their way across the desert with the flaming sword in hand, and edges closer to the angel _(not too different, you and me)._

**pâro**

> the feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong

The word wrong has a handful of definitions. For one, it can be defined as being the opposite of what you are supposed to do. On the other hand, it can mean morally incorrect. Unfortunately for demons, these two options are complete opposites.

At this point, Crawly doesn’t bother keeping track of which definition he’s following.

For right now, he tells Hammurabi that wrong means morally incorrect. And what better way to resolve it than with justice? _(he doesn’t believe it, not really. doesn’t think violence should, as some might say, lend weight to a moral argument.)_

“Eye for an eye,” he suggests lightly. This has always been what he is best at, after all: giving humans a choice. Follow the law or don’t, but the consequences are yours to deal with. It started with Eve, really, but personally he thinks it started a handful of years before that. There had been questions, and a stairway leading downwards, and too much curiosity for his own good. “Curiosity killed the cat” isn’t an expression that has been invented yet, but had it been, Crawly would have thought it incredibly fitting.

He is passing through the central courtyard one day when he sees a familiar blonde standing by the stone tablets upon which the Code of Hammurabi is inscribed. Aziraphale doesn’t appear to have seen him yet, so he approaches the angel from behind before thinking too much about it. Had he paused to think, he might have wondered if Aziraphale would even recognize him, given that it has been approximately five hundred years since they last saw each other. He doesn’t give any thought to that, fortunately. “Some rather nefarious laws, if I may offer my opinion,” Crawly says, sidling up next to Aziraphale. “One might even say demonic.”

To his credit, Aziraphale only looks surprised for a few seconds. “Hammurabi thinks you’re a god,” he responds. “The god of justice, specifically.”

“Idolatry, even better. Beelzebub will love that,” Crawly says, leaning against one of the stone tablets. “Eye for an eye, what do you think? That’ll stir up some conflict.” Aziraphale glances at the tablet and Crawly follows his gaze. This particular law specifies that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty.

“This provision is very kind, Crawly,” Aziraphale says, so cuttingly sincere. Crawly bites back a hiss and settles for a sharp glare at the angel.

“Not s’posed to be kind,” he snaps. “Satan, is it so hard to get sssomething right in this world. Do sssomething you think isss for your ssside and it turnsss out it’sss nice.”

Aziraphale looks unfazed. “Rather reminds me of you, really,” he says softly. “I’ve always thought the Fall didn’t quite allow for anyone to defend their case.”

“Shut up.” He gets control over his hiss, thank Satan. The thing is, Aziraphale isn’t even wrong, which is the worst part. “Don’t question it, angel.”_ (don’t question, don’t wonder—funny, isn’t it, that demons can be more free than angels.)_

**kuebiko**

> a state of exhaustion inspired by senseless violence

Crowley wonders why things must always have two opposite sides. Sides mean conflict and violence and loss, and so often there is so much more in common between both sides than they choose to acknowledge. But it isn’t as if there’s many examples of a gray area that humans can follow: instead, there is Heaven and Hell, the two sides of the scales immortalized in the constellations that he helped create.

The simple act of existence is a constant war, the struggle to assert one’s power over their domain, though that scale of that term varies, of course, if you are human or divine or something in between _(gray areas caught between shadows and light; these are the places where aziraphale and crowley meet)._ It really is unfortunate when humans misinterpret how much power they can exert, as they so often do. Thinking they can understand the Ineffable Plan—and really, it’s in the name, it can’t be understood—only leads to conflict.

“Angel,” Crowley breathes. The word hangs suspended in the still morning air. It is too quiet, here on this battlefield with no soldiers left to fight.

Aziraphale doesn’t say anything. There are no words for this sort of thing. His eyes are as blue as the sky and Crowley is suddenly reminded of a time before words were needed; he thinks if he looks hard enough he can feel it: sorrowangerFEAR, the frayed edges of Aziraphale’s soul brushing against his.

“Tell me She wouldn’t have wanted this,” Crowley says, pleading, praying.

“She can’t have,” Aziraphale says, sounding very far away. “Not in Her name.”

“Armageddon’s supposed to have a war too,” Crowley points out. “In Her name, if you win. No difference between the Crusades and the End Times, if you think about it.”

“Don’t,” Aziraphale says, softly, sharply; the same quiet intensity as feathered wings cutting through the air. Crowley sighs and looks away.

“Why are you here, then, angel?”

Aziraphale looks around, eyes shifting from side to side. He turns away from Crowley then, picking his way across the flattened ground to where a soldier is lying. Dead, dying, somewhere in between. “They told me I couldn’t interfere. I’m just here to…quicken the process.”

He kneels, passes a hand over the man’s forehead, closes his eyes. Crowley nods, swallows dryly, and adjusts his glasses. “I, um.” Takes a breath. Tries again. “I made some soldiers question. They left. Religion, that is. And the war.” _(is it the action that matters, he wonders, or the net amount of evil that results? abandoning god, saving their lives—he does not know whether it is a curse or a blessing.)_

“You were never one for violence,” Aziraphale says, words carefully chosen, deliberate in delivery. “But then again, it’s not too difficult to get them to turn to it.”

**exulansis**

> the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it

The confines of planets are limiting. You can’t run your fingertips through light like skimming the surface of water; can’t hold the pulsing warmth of a newborn star in your palms or feel the silky lightness of a nebula. The fabric of spacetime is not unlike a hand-knit blanket, black holes simply the knots where the needle has caught and snagged.

The windows in Crowley’s flat reach from floor to ceiling, and despite the average height of the building and the inevitable light pollution of the city, they offer an unobstructed view of the night sky. A miracle, Aziraphale has remarked wrly, that Crowley has managed to find such a good piece of real estate.

For a demon, Crowley takes relatively few things for himself. There is his Bentley, his plants, his flat. Aziraphale arguably indulges more: seeking out rare books, searching for foods he hasn’t tried. But Crowley thinks that maybe he makes up for it by collecting the stars. He deserves it, he tells himself. He made them, after all.

The television hums low in the background, another voice in the haze of anticipation that has coalesced around the world. Crowley looks out the window and imagines that he can see a speck of light making its way across the night sky. Next to him, Aziraphale is perched on the edge of the couch, the soft outline of his jaw lit by the flickering of the TV_ (if he looks carefully enough, he can see the angel’s hundreds of eyes in another dimension, constellations in the dark room)._

“Aziraphale,” he says; he can feel the familiar sharpness of his sibilance under his tongue, and he lets a little of it creep into his words, vulnerability more tolerable when they are alone in the confines of his own apartment. “Did you ever sssee the sstarsss?”

“Aren’t I?” Aziraphale asks, motioning first out the window, then at the television, where the broadcasters are informing them that it will be approximately ten minutes until the moon landing.

“I mean from up there,” Crowley says; he traces the shape of Serpens Cauda outside the window, then Serpens Caput, Ophiucus the serpent-bearer splitting the two. He remembers the way those stars had felt when he shaped them, cool and smooth like a snake’s scales; remembers the all-encompassing silence of space—the l’appel du vide of the universe is surprisingly calm. He hears it now, a little, in the pause between his inhale and Aziraphale’s exhale.

“Not all of them,” Aziraphale answers, understanding. “I helped with Earth, mostly. Though I’d always thought I’d like to visit the stars someday.”

“I’d show you,” Crowley says, boldly, timidly_ (here is his heart, aziraphale, this demon’s soul in the shape of a star, a galaxy; it was always too big for a human corporation, after all),_ “They finally get to see what we made for them, it’s only fair you should see it too.”

On the TV, man takes his first steps on the moon.

“Promised you, didn’t I,” Crowley says softly, “I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go.”

**vellichor**

> the strange wistfulness of used bookstores

Demons aren’t meant to feel love. They have no use for it, after all. But all demons were angels, once, and finding love is simply a matter of memory.

Crowley runs his finger across the spine of a book. And perhaps that word is more accurate than it realizes; after all, these shelves are the vertebrae that keep them standing, the skeleton of the home that they have tentatively made for themselves here on Earth. Bones are nothing but a memory of their past selves, in the end.

Here are the scrolls Crowley sent Aziraphale once, mapping the constellations he had once held, a piece of his soul illustrated in dark ink. Here is the copy of Hamlet he had given Aziraphale, his miracle immortalized on paper. Here are the books he saved for Aziraphale in the church, sacred ground burning around them, but the look on Aziraphale’s face a benediction. _(here are his lungs his breath his hope; take his ribs apart carefully, aziraphale, they are the cage holding him back. here is his love—)_

Demons aren’t meant to be generous, but Crowley has been giving parts of himself away for the past six thousand years.

He is sprawled out on the chair in the back of Aziraphale’s bookshop, the angel sitting across from him. Aziraphale pushes his glasses up his nose, the way he always does when he reads. Crowley knows Aziraphale more than himself, he thinks _(and wants to know him more, in all the ways he can)._

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, gently, looking up from his book. “You’re staring.”

“Don’t I always?” Crowley says. It is easier to admit to these kinds of things now. He wonders how demons can find it so difficult to sense love; he feels it rolling off of Aziraphale, unmistakably. He has always felt it, he realizes.

Falling from Heaven is a loss of love. Crowley thinks that this is more than enough to replace it.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments always appreciated :)
> 
> find my art on [tumblr](https://m-9studios.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] between the shadow and the soul](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829834) by [carboncopies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carboncopies/pseuds/carboncopies)


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